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Monday, March 31, 2014

Sharing a clean and simple card today. This one was created a while back for a call and wasn't picked up.

The king piece is from Fresh Squeezed stamps. It's actually an outline shape, that I carefully colored in. Before stamping it, I used some tape to mask the ground line and a sponge dauber to add the color/shadow. Then I used a journaling pen to draw in the ground line and stamped/colored the image.

The alphas are from Lawn Fawn.

Quick and easy. Hope you have a great start to your week. It was pretty rainy, and even a little snowy here, but looks like spring might actually show up this week!

Thursday, March 27, 2014

There's a birthday challenge going on over at Purple Onion Designs, so I decided to ink up some adorable Stacey Yacula stamps and play along. Neither of them is overtly birthday, but really you could use this sweet bird for pretty much everything.

The alphas were cut with Lawn Fawn dies and the papers are from an old MME pad. The letters were getting a little lost against the background so after running them through my Xyron, I used a blending tool and some Antique Linen distress ink to give them a little more tint.

The bird and branch were stamped on white cardstock and colored using distress inks and a waterbrush and then fussy cut. Then I stamped the bird onto the patterned paper. This always makes me a little nervous because I don't have a stamp positioned, so I'm always just eyeballing it, but it worked out pretty well. I adhered the bird and then placed the letters around it. Then I added the branch, only adhering the branch part so that the leaves provide some dimension.

I really love these sweet images from Stacey and you'll definitely be seeing some more of them!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

I'm hoping to have most of my Christmas cards done before Christmas this year, so instead of mass producing, I'll send out the cards I've accumulated throughout the year.

I thought I would play along with the paper piecing challenge at A Blog Named Hero this week and knock a Christmas card out in the process.

There's really only a little bit of piecing here, but a lot of fussy cutting.

The owl was stamped with Versafine and the hat was pieced. It was a little tricky because I wanted the black outlines to show, so I had to adjust a couple times, shaving the piece back slowly until it was just the right shape to fit in the lines. I did have a hard time finding the right shade of red. What I ended up doing was using a Faber Castell Stamper's Big Brush Pen.

The sentiment word bubble was fussy cut and I used Spectrum Noir markers to add some shading/highlights to both the owl and word bubble.

The papers are from the Magical and 25th and Pine collections and the little shadow spot is from an A Muse set.

I applied both Antique Linen and Peeled Paint to the Woodgrain impression plate and ran this through my Vagabond with some mixed media paper.

I also cut a set of Button Stacks as well as a Slide Frame. These were also colored with the distress paints, and I added some Lawn Fawn Lawn Trimmings to finish it off.

The sentiment is from Flower Fusion #12, and was embossed on vellum. I ran the whole piece through my Xyron machine and adhered it to the dry embossed piece. I also cut an extra mat and colored the edges with the Seedless Preserves paint to add a pop of color around the edges.

That's all for tonight. I've got lots of laundry to do before tomorrow!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Both challenges this week involve glitter. I'm generally not a huge glitter fan....it's just generally messy and I have enough mess that I don't really need more. But then I thought why not use my Wink of Stella pen? Happily that's exactly what the ladies at Simon Says Stamp are showcasing this week. I love it when a plan comes together!

I used the Sunshine in My Soul papers. I have to say this is one of my favorite Glitz releases from last year, and I think the most underated. It was a mid-season release last year so didn't seem to get as much play as the others, but it is just so pretty.

I really wanted to showcase this sunburst pattern pattern paper. If you look closely at it you can see some bubbles/circle bokeh like pattern on the paper. I used the Wink of Stella pen to go over those circles. Another mostly solid blue paper was used as the base/mat, and then I die cut the alphas in yet another gold paper. The alphas were run through my 1 1/2" sticker maker. While they were still stuck to the plastic, I added glitter to them with the Wink of Stella. Then I adhered them to the front panel.

Some dimensional adhesive was used to attach the front panel to the card base and then some clear and gold sequins were added for a little extra pop. I really like how they play with the glittered bokeh circles.

It rained all day yesterday, so I'm hoping that the sun really does come out today!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

I got the Teachers Count set a while back and hadn't gotten to ink it up until now. The papers are from Simple Stories Snap Life 6x6 pad. I thought of these papers right away because of the polka dots, then I chose one of the ruled papers to fit the school theme. I trimmed around the tap and then layered it over another piece of the ruled paper.

I struggled a little in terms of stamping the sentiment. Couldn't decide if I should stamp it on an angle to line up with the lines of the paper, but decided to keep it square to the card. The apples are also from the set. I have the matching dies, but I can't find them (which is no real surprise in my mess of a craft room), so I just fussy cut them.

Pretty quick and easy, and I'll tuck this one away to go with one of our end of school year teacher gifts.

Monday, March 17, 2014

The little alien guy is from an Echo Park silhouette file and the speech bubble was created by moi (with a little help from my friend JJ). This was definitely an exercise in learning how to use my silhouette.

Just a simple cardstock based card with a little doodling on the bottom.

Hope that you are having a good start to the week....as I am typing Sunday evening (while it snows here in VA), I'm guessing we're in for at least a delay tomorrow.

For the misted background I wanted to create a sort of sunburst effect. I used four different Dylusions ink sprays and a scrap piece of cardstock. It's really easy to do. Lay your scrap cardstock over about half the card on an angle. Mist the exposed half of the card. Let dry (I used a heat gun to speed the process along). Pivot the scrap cardstock to cover a different section of card and repeat. Each time you'll be misting over parts of what you misted before, but you create some fun diagonals and layers of color.

To accentuate some of those angles, I created a cardstock mat from multiple coordinating colors of cardstock that extended the lines/angles of misting. I cut three mats of colored cardstock, one serving as the base. For the other two, I lined the panel up and then used a pencil to mark where the lines met the mat and then trimmed away the excess. I really like the extra oomph the mat gives to the card.

That's all for today. Hoping to get caught up with some scrapbooking this weekend...and tackle the loads of laundry in the basement.....

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I had a little time yesterday and decided to make a card just for fun. Really, I just wanted to ink up this sweet stamp that I recently got. It's from CTMH, and I just love how delicate the flowers are.

I heat embossed it in white on some kraft cardstock and then colored the images in using distress inks and a water brush. This really took no time at all, and I wasn't even being all that careful with the coloring. The good news is that I think the image, and watercoloring in general is really forgiving when it comes to coloring outside the lines, and this was just fun and easy to make.

This is a 4x4 card, the stamped panel is 3 1/2" square, and to add just a bit of definition, I added a white 3 3/4" square panel beneath it. The white panel is adhered directly to the card base, and the stamped panel was popped up with foam tape.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

This is a bit of a riff on this card I created back when I was taking the Stenciled class.

This time I used Dreamweaver's Large Cathedral Window stencil. The panel was run through my Vagabond to dry emboss the paper. With the stencil still in place, I applied Versamark and embossed in white. Then I added color using my Inktense pencils. One thing, if I was doing this again, I would use watercolor or mixed media paper instead of regular cardstock as the cardstock was starting to pill/degrade a bit.

For the sentiment, I die cut the thanks four times from that dark gray cardstock and obviously once with the stenciled panel. Three of the thanks pieces were stacked and adhered, the fourth was fitted back into the stenciled panel and the negative spaces were replaced there. The thanks from the stenciled piece was adhered to the stack, but slightly offset. Then when I adhered it to the panel, I lined the stenciled piece up to fit correctly, so you get a bit of shadow, but the panel reads as continuous.

For the little panel with the secondary sentiment, I wanted to curve the ends rather than create the traditional banner V shape. I just used a small circle punch to create the curve.

I'm also linking this up with Vicky Papaioannou's challenge to try out InkLinkz. I've never tried it before and it was a lot easier than I thought it would!

It involves a total of two stamps (Ikat Additions from Avery Elle and Quite Like You from WPlus9) and one color of ink (Outdoor Denim from CTMH).

I LOVE generational stamping, and that's what's going on here. While it might look complicated, this is a really simple card to make. The one tip I will share is that once you are done stamping one side of the card, use a ruler to lightly pencil in some guidelines on the other side so that it looks like the rows on the top/bottom align.

That's all for now. Remember, if you haven't yet, there's a giveaway here that ends tonight, so be sure and leave a comment.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

I've been neglecting my scrapbooking again, although in truth this is a layout I've been working on off and on over the last month.

I love reading, but I realized at the beginning of last year that I had really neglected that pastime, so I resolved to read at least one book a month. I did far better than that and ended up reading almost two a month, which still pales in comparison to what I used to consume, but I'm definitely on the right track.

I stamped a bunch of the library cards from Lawn Fawn's Check This Out set, and recorded the title/author and then my thoughts about the book. I also rated them on a scale from 1-5, with 5 being the best.

The little pockets are a Taylored Expression die, and the papers are older, from October Afternoon's 9 to 5 collection and Studio Calico, Yearbook. Those big numbers are fussy cut from a Yearbook sheet and then I went over the sketchy lines with a Micron pen to darken them a bit.

It's kind of an eclectic mix of papers, but it's fun, bright and I like the balance.

Hoping that this is just the first in a series of layouts like this that I make. Interestingly I realized that I mostly read non-fiction and newer books (mostly because I normally go to the new book section to pick out my books these days....it's just easier and more out in the open when there are two girls to wrangle). All the fiction books I read this year are part of series' that I had started a while back, and most of them were kids' books. It's not that I'm opposed to fiction books for people my age. There's stuff that I really like, but I often feel it's kind of a shot in the dark, and if I'm going to read something sad/depressing/dark, I would prefer that it's because it's a real story....I don't know, more inspiring or acceptable if it's real I guess.

Oh, and if you're wondering which books I gave a five star rating to, here they are:

A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
The Astor Orphan: A Memoir by Alexandra Aldrich
The Council of Mirrors by Michael Buckley
V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
Isaac's Army by Matthew Brzezinski
The Favored Daughter by Fawzia Koofi
An Ordinary Man by Paul Ruesesabagina

Sunday, March 2, 2014

I made a quick card last night for this week's Make it Monday at PTI. The challenge was to create a watercolor background and then heat emboss a sentiment. Given my love for watercolors, this was right up my alley.

I created a watercolor panel using my Inktense pencils, trimmed it, and also created another small panel that I die cut the letters for 'happy' from.

Then I embossed the remainder of the sentiment. The base was created using PTI's woodgrain impression plate, and a bit of May Arts burlap string finished things off.

Simple and easy.

I was also excited to see that my friend Virginia is starting up a new challenge, happily the first challenge is watercolor, so I'm going to link this up there too.

Hope you guys are having a nice weekend. We are preparing for some more snow here.....kind of thinking we'll be home from work and school tomorrow....

Saturday, March 1, 2014

***This is my second post for today. If you're looking for the WCMD Blog Hop, please scroll down

I wanted to play along with the last birthday challenge over at WPlus9, but this was definitely the toughest one. We were supposed to stretch ourselves and try something outside our comfort zone. I like to try different things and dabble with many different styles, but the one style that really doesn't come naturally to me is Freestyle Collage. I'm kind of an ordered person and don't really enjoy the 'free' part of freestyle.

So, here's what I came up with.

I used Amy Tangerine's Sketchbook collection for the thin strips of paper and the fussy cut flowers. The frame was fussy cut from the 12x12 paper. Some bits of doily and stitching as well as some leaves from More Fresh Cuts that were die cut and then stamped after I spritzed the stamp with water added some pops of green.

I felt like it needed a little more oomph, so I added some sequins. Funny thing about sequins, I have a hard time stopping....and then I often feel like I overdid it, but I think this is OK....I used magenta, clear, and gold sequins from Neat & Tangled and those giant gold ones are from Teresa Collins (thanks Tessa!).

What do you think? Free enough to be considered freestyle collage

I also wanted to say thanks to Dawn for hosting all these challenges this month. I've really enjoyed playing along!

Hey everyone! I'm excited to be part of a WCMD blog hop today. Each of the ladies who recently won the competition is participating. We're using items from our prize box and creating cards in the categories in which we won.

My category is love. I chose to use October Afternoon's Farmhouse papers and embellishments as well as Lawn Fawn's Woodgrain Backdrops stamp.

This is one of those cards that had a mind of it's own. I planned to do something much different, but this just evolved. The woodgrain background paper was created using the woodgrain background/border. I added a few layers of patterned paper, and then created a flower using fussy cut stamped hearts. The stem was fussy cut from one of the patterned papers and then I added an OA button and alphas for the sentiment.

Simple and easy, not necessarily my normal style, but it does the trick.

I'm also offering some blog candy....a few of the items from the box that I thought I would share. I meant to take a photo, but totally didn't get around to it, but it includes Pink Paislee's Cottage Farms 6x6 papers, Hero Arts Mint Julep Shadow Ink, Stampin' Up's Snowflake Season Simply Sent Card Kit, and 7 Gypsies Vintage Cling Stamps. I'll probably also include some other items I have on hand. To enter, just leave a comment. If you're a follower, leave me an extra comment to be entered twice. Comments will close on Thursday March 6th, and I'll announce a winner Friday. March 7th.

OK, that's all from me. Please head out and check out the rest of the girls' cards, many of them are also offering prizes. Your next stop is Trinh, but I have the full list below if you need it.

About Me

I'm married to Andrew. We have two daughters, Ellie and Carina, and a beagle named Oshie. I love scrapbooking, stamping, making cards, playing hockey, reading books, and hanging out with family and friends. Thanks for coming by and spending part of your day with me.